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[NoMoreFun]

Do you think you would have gotten into Dominion if the Base Set (the first set you buy) contained:

A: No cards with +Action (though possibly cards like Throne Room and Cultist)?
B: No cards with +Buy?
C: No cards with +$ (the only way to get money was by playing treasures)?
D: No cards with +Card (just to round off the list)?
E: No attacks/positive interaction (eg no Council Room)
F: No trashing
G: Any combination of the above?

[Watno]

Now that's interesting.

Do you think you would have gotten into Dominion if the Base Set (the first set you buy) contained:

A: No cards with +Action (though possibly cards like Throne Room and Cultist)?

This one is the hardest, but I think if at least Throne Room and some more sumilar stuff would have been in, then yes.

B: No cards with +Buy?

This one is easy. Definitely yes. I used to think +buy is the must useless thing a card can have.
I also think that if the first exapnsion had introsduced the +buy mechanic people would have said it's stupid and underpowered. 

C: No cards with +$ (the only way to get money was by playing treasures)?

Another yes. I think +$ is the basic effect with the least necessity. The game would be a lot poorer without it, but I think it would still work fine.

D: No cards with +Card (just to round off the list)?

This one is a no. At some point I realized that what makes Thunderstone so boring and slow is taht your hand doesn't grow during your turn. It just takes away a lot of the combo feeling

E: No attacks/positive interaction (eg no Council Room)
F: No trashing

If there had been enough intersting effects left, probably yes.

G: Any combination of the above?

After all I'm glad we have all those things.

[Piemaster]

Well if the base set had no +Actions then it would basically be a big money game right?  I can't see that holding my interest for very long.  The game might almost be described as being broken.

+Buy is nice to have, but I don't think it would have totally killed the game by not having it in base.  Could have waited for the first expansion.

With no +$, some cards would be a lot more difficult to balance and there just wouldn't be enough variables to keep the cards interesting I don't think.

No +Cards would make the game much worse I think, once again turning it into a Big Money game.  Without extra cards, extra actions and buys would also be far less meaningful.

I don't think the game would suffer too much from having no attacks, after all I have played some excellent games where there have been no attacks in the kingdom.  But I think it would make the game far harder to get into and it would probably feel quite boring for beginners.

No trashing would probably make the least difference to the base game and could probably have been saved for an expansion without any serious detrimental effects.

So, in short:

Would be a loss, but the game would ultimately be okay
+Buy
Trashing

Game would work, but would be far worse and probably forgotten by now
Attacks
+$

Game would be bad/broken
+Cards
+Actions

[Kuildeous]

I agree that +Buy and +$ are great, but the lack of those wouldn't have ruined my enjoyment of the game. Additional cards and actions are kind of key in this game, and I probably would have lost interest if I didn't have those.

If there were never attacks or other interaction, then I don't think we'd have noticed. It definitely would have added more weight to the criticism that Dominion is just multiplayer solitaire, but I don't think it would diminish the game.

Trashing is interesting. It is such an integral part of the game that when I play other deckbuilders, like Legendary, one of the first thing I do is identify any way to remove chaff and streamline my deck. But you know, if Dominion never had any trashers, I don't think I would have even noticed it wasn't there. I'd continue playing with my 7 Coppers and 3 Estates and base my strategy around them being there. Eventually, a future expansion or some other deckbuilding game would introduce it, and it would have been quite the "ah-ha" moment.

[Ratsia]

Trashing is interesting. It is such an integral part of the game that when I play other deckbuilders, like Legendary, one of the first thing I do is identify any way to remove chaff and streamline my deck. But you know, if Dominion never had any trashers, I don't think I would have even noticed it wasn't there. I'd continue playing with my 7 Coppers and 3 Estates and base my strategy around them being there. Eventually, a future expansion or some other deckbuilding game would introduce it, and it would have been quite the "ah-ha" moment.

While I agree with the earlier comments that +cards is probably the most critical property to have in any deckbuilder, I must go with your observation of efficient thrashing being one of the key aspects differentiating Dominion from other deckbuilders. One could hence phrase the answer roughly as "Without +cards the game would have been bad, but without thrashing it would have been just one of the bunch." From this perspective thrashing is what makes Dominion stand out.

I actually wrote similar answer for an earlier hypothetical, which more focus on the efficiency of thrashing. Removing chapel would probably have been almost as bad as removing thrashing in general; if all available thrashers are light, then it takes way too long for people to get the "ah-ha" moment.

[philosophyguy]

I think all of the components were important for me to get into Dominion. Part of what made the base game magical was that there were so many different ways the game could play: rush for Gardens, curse your opponent to death, BM-draw, Chapel into a thin deck, etc. Even pieces like +Buy, which were woefully underrated, still were useful in "Province or Duchy-Estate?" decisions.

If the base game hadn't had all of these possibilities, I wouldn't have been confident that there was more to explore and I would have questioned whether an expansion would be worth it. And that, more than anything else, would have killed Dominion for me.

[dondon151]

Does the absence of +buy imply the absence of gainers (Workshop, Remodel)?

I think you guys underrate +buy. Most of the arguments here suggest that the lack of ___ makes combos less viable. Well, most combos tend to lead into some sort of engine, and +buy is critical for engines to beat BM at all.

[Watno]

Lots of poeople underrated +buy in base set days I think. They still liked the game.

[Warfreak2]

Lots of poeople underrated +buy in base set days I think. They still liked the game.

Those people never triple-Provinced. Poor noobs!

[Kuildeous]

Lots of poeople underrated +buy in base set days I think. They still liked the game.

We overrated +Buys.

But then again, we were that group that said, "Yes! I got my Woodcutter. Now I'll buy another Woodcutter AND a Copper!"

I think if the game were released without extra Buys, we wouldn't have noticed so much. We'd lament getting a hand of $16. "If only I could get two of these Provinces!"

Although, it's interesting to note that a lot of games have infinite Buys (Ascension and Legendary). So, when we talk about a lack of +Buy in Dominion, is that assuming only 1 Buy or infinite Buys? Of course, the latter would be impractical with the cost of Copper and Curses being 0.

[mail-mi]

Unlimited buys? Gardens.

THIS IS MADNESS!!!!!!

[Voltaire]

Unlimited buys? Gardens.

THIS IS MADNESS!!!!!!

Q: How can you tell if your opponent is going Gardens?

A: They bought the entire stack of Coppers T1.

[NoMoreFun]

Does the absence of +buy imply the absence of gainers (Workshop, Remodel)?

I didn't intend that, but that could be explored as well if you want.

Love some of the usernames coming out in this thread: philosophyguy, Voltaire

[liopoil]

H: No source of +2 actions, or TR. Essentially, making it impossible to play 2 terminal actions in one turn. Still cards like market though.

[markusin]

I agree that +Buy and +$ are great, but the lack of those wouldn't have ruined my enjoyment of the game. Additional cards and actions are kind of key in this game, and I probably would have lost interest if I didn't have those.

If there were never attacks or other interaction, then I don't think we'd have noticed. It definitely would have added more weight to the criticism that Dominion is just multiplayer solitaire, but I don't think it would diminish the game.

Trashing is interesting. It is such an integral part of the game that when I play other deckbuilders, like Legendary, one of the first thing I do is identify any way to remove chaff and streamline my deck. But you know, if Dominion never had any trashers, I don't think I would have even noticed it wasn't there. I'd continue playing with my 7 Coppers and 3 Estates and base my strategy around them being there. Eventually, a future expansion or some other deckbuilding game would introduce it, and it would have been quite the "ah-ha" moment.

Yeah I never had that "ah-ha" moment about trashing just by playing the base set. I was one of those people who thought "Chapel? I guess it's there to trash curses, but wow it trashes up to 4 and still costs only $2 like cellar? I guess pure trashing isn't so great". In fact, I rarely bought Moneylender, thinking "trashing Coppers? It's a Trap!" I actually have no idea when I discovered the power of trashing Coppers and Estates, but it was before I started playing on Isotropic.

Lack of +2 actions? Village mostly lead to "village idiot" situations. I guess I was more the big money player who got annoyed by those 10 card Village/Smithy/Laboratory chains. I liked +cards and +$ but was really a fan of +Buy , and was the most likely to buy Council Room. I also defended Gardens a lot, and desperately wanted it to ultimately be good (I also defended Chancellor, explaining to the others why you'd ever want one). Gosh, I must have really sucked.

So how did Gardens affect the rest of you? It was really the card that made me eager to see what more Dominion had in store.

[Polk5440]

The base game was not enough to get me hooked. So by default, I guess my answer is "no" to all of them.

I wouldn't have gotten into Dominion (if "gotten into" = play regularly) if there weren't expansions.

Also, I imagine that there are people on this forum where the online implementation was what really got them hooked.

[GiB]

Also, I imagine that there are people on this forum where the online implementation was what really got them hooked.

Isotropic, to be precise. So fast and enjoyable to find and play a game. I can't really stand Goko's UI, even with the extension.

[heron]

Also, I imagine that there are people on this forum where the online implementation was what really got them hooked.

Yep, that's me!
I played my first game of dominion (intrigue) with three other new players (you would start twitching if I told you about it in depth), and I was like wow, this game is awesome. Note that my family is not much for board games, so I had little exposure. We had Settlers, and I got them to play it like twice. So Dominion was like an amazing awakening for me, especially since I now don't even like Settlers.
I found this forum and isotropic, and everyone on iso was really nice to me even though I didn't know what any of the cards did.
When I did buy the base set, I was kind of like, this is sort of boring.

However, on topic:

Honestly, you could have ditched anything from the base set (or in this case, Intrigue) and I still would have loved it, since I only experienced that for my first game. Obviously if you ditched all of those the game would be dumb though.

[Awaclus]

Unlimited buys? Gardens.

THIS IS MADNESS!!!!!!

Q: How can you tell if your opponent is going Gardens?

A: They bought the entire stack of Coppers T1.

Q: How can you tell if your opponent is not going Gardens?

A: You bought the entire stack of Coppers T1.

[SCSN]

Also, I imagine that there are people on this forum where the online implementation was what really got them hooked.

I got into Dominion after a friend linked me to isotropic late August last year. For a while I didn't even know this game had a physical implementation lol.

[popsofctown]

I bought the base set only because of iso.  If base dominion was my only try before i buy, even with all the mechanics it offers i probably wouldn't have bought in.

[Kuildeous]

Lack of +2 actions? Village mostly lead to "village idiot" situations.

I think a lot of players got hooked by using the Village Idiot technique. It's so empty, but it feels like you're doing something. It almost becomes a meta-game. You're not competing for points; you're competing to see who can draw the most cards in one turn. By the time the player graduates past the Village Idiot stage, he has learned of the wonderful interactions with cooler cards.

The game would be such a different beast without +Action cards, but it might not have been hurt too badly without +2 Action cards. You wouldn't have the Village Idiot shtick to draw in players, but I think those players would still have fun with perpetual Markets or other tricks.

[NoMoreFun]

No +$ would have been interesting for the Base set to firmly cement the role of Treasures, and would have gotten people more used to buying Silver and Gold early on. Might have given Thief it's day in the sun as well.